The Terror Renewed for Season 2

Posted by Marissa Shapiro

1 year ago

AMC has announced that the network’s critically acclaimed first anthology series, The Terror, has been renewed. A 10-episode second season is slated to air in 2019.

The next iteration, co-created and executive-produced by Alexander Woo (True Blood) and Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla), will be set during World War II and center on an uncanny specter that menaces a Japanese-American community from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific. The second season will also once again be executive-produced by legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott.

“The Terror has given us the opportunity to take a unique approach to the anthology format,” David Madden, president of original programming for AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios said in a statement. “We are thrilled to announce a second season and dramatize one of the most chilling and important events of the 20th Century, guided by the vision of the gifted Alexander Woo and Max Borenstein. Our deep appreciation goes to the persistently creative and passionate showrunning team of David Kajganich and Soo Hugh, the incomparable Ridley Scott and the rest of the producing team, and the outstanding cast led by Jared Harris for launching this concept and leaving us on the precipice of terrifying new adventures as we continue with the next chapter of The Terror.”

Added Woo, who will also serve as showrunner, in a statement: “I’m deeply honored to be telling a story set in this extraordinary period. We hope to convey the abject terror of the historical experience in a way that feels modern and relevant to the present moment. And the prospect of doing so with a majority Asian and Asian-American cast is both thrilling and humbling.”

“As a history-buff and genre geek (not to mention a conscious American today), it’s clear that truth is always scarier than fiction,” Borenstein said in a statement. “This season of The Terror uses as its setting one of the darkest, most horrific moments in our nation’s history. The Japanese-American internment is a blemish on the nation’s conscience — and one with dire resonance to current events. I’m thrilled that AMC is giving us the chance to use that darkness as the inspiration for what I hope will be a trenchant, terrifying season of TV.”

Season 1 of The Terror was inspired by a true story about the Royal Navy’s perilous voyage in 1847 while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. Vulture called the premiere season “a horrifying 19th century nightmare,” the Daily Beast called it “TV’s most terrifying new show,” and TV Insider said it was “literate and philosophical, yet shocking and terrifically scary.”